The world of sound that surrounds us, often seems to remain
somewhat obscured, veiled not so much due to any inherent lack of physiological
auditory acuity, but (as many scholars would suggest - ref) rather by the
dominance of the visual apparatus (and the technologies that extend it) as our
governing sensory logic. Much has been written about the primacy of the visual
in modernity (reference/s needed), highlighting it’s significance, yet only
more recently have questions of the role and relevance of auditory perception,
and concern and critique of its somewhat marginalized epistemological position
come to the fore.
One of the first figures to shed discursive light on this
relationship, was the pre-imminent Canadian media scholar Marshall McLuhan;
whose notions of aural/oral and visual/typographical culture explored and
exposed this question regarding sensory-ratios and mediation.
“We, who live in the world of reflected light, in visual
space, may also be said to be in a state of hypnosis. Ever since the collapse
of the oral tradition in early Greece, before the age of Parmenidas, Western
civilization has been mesmerized by a picture of the universe as a limited
container in which all things are arranged according to a vanishing point, in
linear geometric order. The intensity of this conception is such that it
actually leads to abnormal suppression of hearing and touch in some
individuals. (We like to call them “bookworms.”) Most of the information we
rely upon comes through our eyes; our technology is arranged to heighten that
effect.”[1]
McLuhan goes on to elaborate a dialectic sensory logic
whereby cultures tend to primarily be governed by aural perception and hence
occupy acoustic space which he associates with oral or non/pre-literate
culture, or by visual perception and thereby occupy visual space which he
associates with literate/written cultures[2],
particular those stemming from Greek phonetic script. In his view this sensory
basis is primary to how we interact in and understand the world, furthermore the
technological forms that a given culture will elaborate, “extensions” as
McLuhan termed them embody this bias, even entrenching it further.
He offers these definitions for each mode of
perception/sensory space respectively;
“Visual space
structure is an artifact of Western civilization created by Greek phonetic
literacy. It is a space perceived by the eyes when separated or abstracted from
all other senses. As a construct of the mind, it is continuous, which is to say
that is infinite, divisible, extensible, and featureless – what the early Greek
geometers referred to as physis. It is also connected (abstract figures with
fixed boundaries, linked logically and sequentially but having no visible
grounds), homogenous (uniform everywhere), and static (qualitatively
unchangeable). It is like the “mind’s eye” or visual imagination which
dominates the thinking of literate Western people, some of whom demand ocular
proof of existence itself.” [3]
“Acoustic space
structure is the natural space of nature-in-the-raw inhabited by non-literate
people. It is like the “mind’s ear” or acoustic imagination that dominates the
thinking of pre-literate and post-literate humans alike (rock video has as much
acoustic power as a Watusi mating dance). It is both discontinuous and
nonhomogeneous. Its resonant and interpenetrating processes are simultaneously
related with centers everywhere and boundaries nowhere. Like music, as communications engineer
Barrington Nevitt puts it, acoustic space required neither proof nor explanation
but is made manifest through cultural content.”[4]
Whilst McLuhan’s notion’s of sensory ratio’s are not without
their problematic and reductive aspects, they serve to flag the basic inequity
of the senses that predominates culturally, and highlight the relationship of
this perceptual bias to our dominant modes of knowledge (epistemolgical
frameworks), and the technological extensions of a given culture. This
relationship between the senses, modes of knowledge, and technological
mediation is of central importance here, as these three concerns and their relationship
are key to this enquiry.
McLuhan, in contrast to another Canadian figure of central
importance in this study, R Murray Schafer, evidently was optimistic about the
role technology might play in correcting this relationship toward developing a
more balanced sensory-gestalt. As quoted above, in his eyes; “rock video has as
much acoustic power as a Watusi mating dance”[5]
The French film
theorist Christian Metz exposes a similar line of thought regarding the primacy
of vision in contemporary western culture, in which vision and touch take on
primary significance among the sense faculties, with hearing, taste, smell etc,
playing a secondary role. He differs from McLuhan in the sense that his point
of emphasis is ontological/epistemological focused rather than McLuhan’s
socio-technological emphasis;
“There is a kind of primitive substantialism which is
profoundly rooted in our culture (and without a doubt in other cultures as
well, though not necessarily in all cultures) which distinguishes fairly
rigidly the primary qualities that determine the list of objects (substances)
and the secondary qualities which correspond to attributes applicable to these
objects. This conception is reflected in the entire Western philosophic
tradition beginning with notions put forth by Descartes and Spinoza. It is also
clear that this "world view" has something to do with the
subject-predicate structure particularly prevalent in Indo-European languages.
For us, the primary qualities are in general visual and tactile. Tactile,
because touch is traditionally the very criteria of materiality. Visual because
the identification processes necessary to present-day life and to production
techniques rely on the eye above all the other senses (it is only in language
that the auditory order is "rehabilitated", as if by compensation).
The subject is too vast for this study. Nevertheless, it is possible to begin
to discern certain qualities which seem to be "secondary": sounds,
(evoked above), olfactory qualities (a "scent" is barely an object),
and even certain sub-dimensions of the visual order such as color.”[6]
This critique of the primacy of the visual put forward by
theorists such as McLuhan and Metz, has by un-large fallen on deaf ears. Though
various artists/composers primarily with the Classical Avant-Guard and the
Sonic Arts frame –individuals obviously somewhat more sensitive to these
concerns-, have made significant attempts to correct or in the least raise
awareness of this imbalance. It is this process (within the nascent discipline
of sonic arts), an opening of the ears so to speak, with which we will now
concern ourselves.
[1]
McLuhan, Marshall, Visual and Acoustic
Space excerpt from Audio Culture,
eds. Christopher Cox and David Warner, Continuum, New York, 2006, pg 68
[4]
Ibid, pg 69
[5]
Ibid, pg 71
[6]
Metz, Christian, and Gurrieri, Georgia, Aural
Objects, excerpt Yale French Studies, No. 60, Cinema/Sound, 1980, pg 68-69
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